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Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by jerome-jh on Thursday December 03, 2020 @04:30PM (#25295325)
> behavior that is inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager.

Maybe my remark is down to earth but, she literally told her group to stop working. I do not know of any company where this is an acceptable behavior for a manager. Besides the disagreements, it sounds to me that was the action that caused Google to pull the trigger.

Also from Dean's email it is pretty clear there are a number of new products down the pipe based on AI. At one point top management decided the company should stop denigrating its own products.

Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by frongpik on Thursday December 03, 2020 @08:02PM (#25297700)
She was fired for damaging Google's reputation. In her email, she carelessly demanded names of those who reported her, that can be interpreted as extortion, and Jeff didn't miss the opportunity to call her out. Her offer to resign was another mistake: she would be fired anyways, but for a different reason and with more paperwork. Now if she takes this to a court, she would have to tell the judge what she needed the names for.
Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by meragrin on Saturday December 05, 2020 @01:11AM (#25312246)
She wasn't fired. She made it clear she could not work there her demands were not met and would resign. Google accepted her resignation.
Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by dragonwriter on Saturday December 05, 2020 @01:46AM (#25312399)
> She wasn't fired.

Yes she was. Even the letter communicating to her the termination of employment made it fairly explicit that she was being terminated on terms different than what Google interpreted her resignation to be, due to the internal mail.

It's clear that for external PR purposes Google wants to maintain the story that it was merely accepting her resignation, but while clearly worded with the intent that an incomplete reading would support the narrative, the letter to her fairly directly (and unusually for a case where they viewed themselves as accepting a resignation) mad explicit that employment was being terminated, immediately, based on separate grounds from the supposed resignation.

On the other hand, I guess making it explicit that she was being fired for public internal complaints about a culture of discrimination is one way (like, the worst way possible, but one way) of making the case that what happened to Damore wasn't discrimination against white men, but just what they do to any internal criticism of Google culture.

Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by fhrow4484 on Thursday December 03, 2020 @04:42PM (#25295541)
> she literally told her group to stop working.

Where did you read that?

in the email shown,she told a listserv called "Women and Allies" to stop writing docs that are an attempt to better the situation in terms of diversity, equity, inclusion as writing those docs are like pissing in the wind in her opinion

Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by PeterisP on Friday December 04, 2020 @03:27AM (#25300243)
Quoting Jeff Dean's email about this (as published in https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...) " I also feel badly that hundreds of you received an email just this week from Timnit telling you to stop work on critical DEI programs. Please don’t. I understand the frustration about the pace of progress, but we have important work ahead and we need to keep at it." implies that at least Google does interpret her email as her telling people to stop work on certain issues.
Re:AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google by caddemon on Thursday December 03, 2020 @08:22PM (#25297849)
Well there is precedence for firing people who criticize Google's diversity policies on mailing lists...